In 1902 Theoder Herzl, founder of political Zionism, wrote to Great Britain’s Minister of Colonies Cecil Rhodes stating: “You are being invited to help make history.  It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews… How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.”   Palestine is the last settler colonial project to be commissioned in the late 19^th early 20^th centuries and still unfolding as we enter into the 21^st Century.

In centering Palestine’s modern history around settler colonial discourses Dr. Bazian provides a framework to understand and relate to the unfolding events from the late 19^th century up to the present in a clear and unambiguous way.  Zionism settler colonialism has salient features such as the normative deployment violence, religious justification, having a garrison state to sponsor it, transforming the land and geography and constituting a new colonial epistemology related to it as well as the expulsion and negating the existence of an indigenous population.  The book offers a theoretical basis for approaching Palestine as a subject without falling into pitfalls of internationally supported ‘peace process’ that on the one hand affirms the settler colonial rights, problematizes the colonialized and dispenses with the ramifications.

Book launch: December 12th in Amsterdam.